All I See
by typedamon
Summary: Full Summary: After spending the first month of her summer enjoying every second of her new life with Damon, Elena begins to notice some subtle differences in her lover's behaviour. Worried by the random and unexplainable changes, she sets out to unearth his problems. (Set before 5x01 'I Know What You Did Last Summer. AU.)
1. Prologue

Full Summary: After spending the first month of her summer enjoying every second of her new life with Damon, Elena begins to notice some subtle differences in her lover's behaviour. Worried by the random and unexplainable changes, she sets out to unearth his problems. (Set before 5x01 'I Know What You Did Last Summer. AU.)

All I See  
Prologue

Tilting his head upward, he caught the scent on the air. Freezing, his closed his eyes, tuning his senses into the world around him. He let the smell of the prey consume him, driving any form of rational thought from his body, leaving nothing but the knowledge of what it truly was to feel hate. All those years ago, the Whitmore family's actions had ignited a fire that burnt so relentless, it would char everything it's in path. A fire so powerful, it would destroy them for years to come. Punishment, after punishment. Atonement was unreachable for the entire bloodline - the horrors that the family had bestowed upon it's victims were too severe to be forgotten.

The pain still cut through him like it was yesterday.

Enraged by the memory, he surged forward, following nothing but his own instincts. He moved fluidly through the dense undergrowth, the foliage caressing him as he went, encouraging him. When the scent of the family had enveloped him, he stopped. Peering through the branches, he caught sight of them. There was a woman, tall and pretty with heavy lidded eyes. Her lips were curved upwards in a smile, her head shaking in amusement as she observed the interaction between the older man and the teenager. Laughter. Smiles. Love.

It made him sick.

With a casual grace, he moved silently into the circle of trees. He cleared his throat.

Instantly, the family was alert. The older man dragged his son back, stepping in front of his wife and child as he stared into the eyes of the stranger. They widened slightly with recognition, but not once did fear enter the lines of his face. Of course they would recognise him; research would always carry on as long as a Whitmore was alive. The knowledge would always be there, in their disgusting archive for the next relation to enjoy.

The predator didn't bother to explain. Instead, faster than blinking, he was at the son's side. As easily as breathing, his fist crashed into the back of the teenager's head, dropping him immediately to the ground with the heavy thump of someone unconscious. There was a shrill, horrified scream as the mother fell to her knees, hands trembling as she shook her son, desperation and fear making the noises that tore from her throat unintelligible.

The noise of grief irritated him.

With a roll of his eyes, he silenced her. His hands slotted around her slim throat. With one quick squeeze, she spluttered. There was one moment of clarity as she managed to understand what was happening. Then there was a sickening crack as the bones in her neck yielded beneath his strong hands. Beside her son, she collapsed to the ground, limbs spread eagled, head lying at an odd angle... as useless and floppy as a ragdoll.

"NO!" The tormented sound of pure agony exploded from the final member's chest, guttural and thick with terror. The predator merely watched, vaguely entertained by the display of emotion as the man's quivering hands fumbled all over his wife, hunting desperately for any of sign of a pulse. When he found nothing, he collapsed in a heap, his shoulders shaking with racking sobs. "Please, please. Just don't let him die as well!"

The predator grinned, his lips curling back against his gums as he revealed the sharp dangerous teeth that descended from his top jaw. Of course he would leave the son alive - one always needed to survive. Without answering the man, he leapt on him, head rearing back before he plunged the razor sharp canines into the man's jugular. The warm spray of blood, thick and delicious spurted into the predator. The man's body shook, his limbs flailing out in an effort to dislodge the vampire from his throat. Then he grew limp and still as his life's blood was sucked forcibly from his veins. Discarding the body on the floor, the vampire straightened up. Looking with a certain pride at the mess he had created, he took a single second to appreciate the flavour of his crime.

_Revenge tastes sweet. _


	2. Chapter One

Full Summary: After spending the first month of her summer enjoying every second of her new life with Damon, Elena begins to notice some subtle differences in her lover's behaviour. Worried by the random and unexplainable changes, she sets out to unearth his problems. (Set before 5x01 'I Know What You Did Last Summer. AU.)

All I See  
Chapter One

_So I've been sleeping with this silence in my mind..._

A pattering of light thumps caused Elena to surface groggily from her comfortable, dreamless sleep. Blinking the last of it's hold away from her, she absently threw her right hand out, patting the king size bed beside her. On only feeling empty space, alarm jolted her into a state of liveliness. Sitting bolt upright, she looked wildly about the room. The sunlight was still soft, the kind of gentle yellow glow that you only got when the first rays of morning light stretched over the world. It took her a couple of seconds to register the light thumping noise again. Momentarily puzzled, she relaxed when she realised it was the shower on the far left of the room.

Closing her eyes, she settled comfortably back against the feather stuffed pillows, a small radiant smile tugging at the corners of her lips as she allowed her mind to slip comfortably back to the four weeks of lightness and joy she had spent with Damon Salvatore.

"Elena?" That deep voice dragged her from her thoughts. Eyes fluttering open, she was blessed with the sight of him standing casually, ebony dark hair wet and tousled from his shower, beads of glassy water littered across his bare chest, a soft white towel looped loosely around his waist. For a moment, she just let herself admire him. He was truly a person who could be considered exquisite; well built but not overly enormous in the disgusting steroid ingesting way that seemed to be becoming more popular with young males, pale but not sickly looking, a well sculpted face with defined cheek bones and sensuous yet somewhat sulky mouth, topped off with the most dazzling blue eyes that she had ever encountered in her life. His looks were precisely what his personality was: a little dark, a little light and utterly individual.

"I'm awake," she eventually answered, a smile spreading across her face as she scooted back in the bed to lean against the headboard, pulling the sheet further up her legs. "You're up early."

Damon turned away from her, crossing the room to his expansive wardrobe. There was the sound of metal scraping against metal as he shuffled through shirts hung on coat wires before he found the articles he was searching for. Slinging them over his shoulder, they landed in a heap beside her. He just nodded vaguely at her before dropping onto the bed, stretching his arms out in front of him, clicking his fingers as he did so.

Scrunching her nose up in disgust, Elena swung her legs off of the bed, standing up. With a yawn, she looked over her reflection in the mirror. For the first time since she had officially decided on being with Damon, she acknowledged just how _alive_ she looked. The raw happiness that had come with making a final, decision that she believed in, the decision to let herself be with the man that she loved, showed in her looks. She was practically glowing, her eyes sparkling in a way that they had never done before. That lingering sadness that Elena had become accustomed to seeing hanging over her eyes like a shadow was gone. As she pulled back her hair, flicking the long, thick bunch through a hair tie, Elena marvelled at the way in someone who was considered as being particularly dark and shady could bring so much light to her life.

"So, where are you taking me today?" Elena grinned, spinning on the spot to face her boyfriend. On catching sight of him, she faltered slightly. He was perched on the edge of the bed, still wrapped in the towel. He was gazing out the window, his impossibly blue eyes glazed over. "Damon?" Elena asked, taking an uncertain step toward him. Hesitantly, she tapped him on the shoulder. The physical prompt caused him to jump, a reaction that was completely unlike him. "Are you ok?"

Damon blinked at her several times, the sheen that covered his eyes fading. "I'm fine. Why'd do you ask?"

"You just looked a million miles away."

The debonair smile that Elena was so familiar with broke across his handsome face. Getting to his feet, Damon removed the towel with an extravagant flourish as if he had just unveiled something incredibly rare and valuable from a museum. Ignore Elena's laughter, he casually began to dress himself. "Today, we are taking a leisurely drive up to your holiday cabin, where we will spend the day engaging in various activities of my choice."

Elena raised an eyebrow at him, smirking. "Activities of your choice, huh?"

Damon responded with a knowing look, the smoulder in his eyes making her stomach flip over. He said something about making breakfast before he left the room, leaving Elena standing, immobile. In some ways, she still found it hard to digest the fact she was actually _with_ Damon - officially, happily and comfortably. Whilst Caroline had been doing her utmost to convince Elena that her relationship was a train running down the wrong tracks, Elena had been having the time of her life... and he was opening up to her. Really and truly, Damon was sharing the most secretive portions of his life with her. The fact he felt comfortable enough to do so thrilled her.

Glowing, she danced spiritedly into the open-plan bathroom area of his bedroom. Inhaling deeply, a smile crossed her face as she caught the deep masculine scent of Damon's shampoo and the Lynx shower gel he tended to favour above anything else. There room was warm and soupy, still fogged over with the steam from the hot water. Rolling her eyes, Elena made for the window. Of course he wouldn't open it to air the place. As she crossed past the bath, something made her stop. There was a strange smell, something that seemed maddeningly familiar yet so out of place at the same time. It was a sharp twang in comparison to the luxurious smells of soaps. The twang was both appealing yet slightly repulsive, causing Elena's lips to curl and her brow to furrow in confusion. Shaking her head to clear her nostrils of the weirdly metallic scent, she threw the shutters of the window open, allowing the cool morning air to infiltrate the humid space.

/\

World War III had begun last night when he slipped from his bed, leaving Elena nestled peacefully on the white Egyptian cotton sheets. He had stood over her for a moment, just admiring her flawlessness, drinking in the tranquillity of the scene... a gorgeous female, a picture of innocence lying carefree in his bed, immersed in a deep slumber. Taking note of exactly what she was... somebody _pure, _had been the trigger that sent his brain reeling. Damon paced up and down the room, restless and in agony as he felt himself splitting in two. How was it possible, to have such dark thoughts about something that happened decades ago, when such a pure, light-filled girl had be tucked safely in his arms only moments before?

How could he think about doing something so dastardly, when he knew the knowledge of the violent act would send her running from him in an instant? But how could he ignore himself - the person that _he_ was?

Damon's fists had trembled as he mulled over every possible scenario. Allow the family to live? Allow them _happiness? _They had years of atonement to make up for. The horrors of the cell and that sterile surgeons room had never quite left him. He had always been slightly on edge, but the torment he had been subject to over the course of those 5 years had left him positively unhinged. Every violent act he had committed in his life had been creatively staged. Damon had always drawn inspiration from the agonizing experiences he had been forced through... all because of the Whitmore family.

He had _felt_ the darkness billow through his veins like black ink, staining him from inside and out. Beads of perspiration had collected in glistening crystals on his forehead. His whole body had trembled. He knew how to track them. He knew what they looked like. Where they lived. What they sounded like. What they smelled like... how they tasted.

There came the tipping point. The image of his head rocking back before his fang pierced the flesh, flooding his mouth with tangy taste of blood, death and revenge, the way they would flail in horror as they made futile attempts to escape.

It had to happen.

Without a second glance, he had slid away, accepting the familiar cloak of darkness that the night draped across him.

It was only when he returned as the night had begun to recede, that Damon was illuminated to just what he had done. Covered in gore, he had gone straight to the shower, leaving the windows shut as he squeezed soap into the tub before he'd even got in it. If he was going to be able to pull it off, Elena couldn't smell even a trace of blood. Determinedly, he had stepped into the shower, scrubbing away the flakes of crimson that had begun to turn brown as they soaked into his skin. Looking upwards into the powerful jet of water, Damon let it cover his face, washing away all traces of the terror he had bestowed upon the family.

Universally, the shower had become his place to think. Typically, it was usually when he had begun to muse about Elena, her perfection and the sheer luck that had come his way when she had decided to pick him over Stefan. But that morning, it was different. With nauseating realisation, Damon knew that his desire for revenge had nearly cost him the love of his love. Elena was tolerant of him; worryingly tolerant in fact. Yet the mindless slaughtering of people that she'd consider innocent was something that she wouldn't be able to handle. He could only picture her sun-bronzed face growing pale as he described to her the way he had stalked the family, knocking out the son before he had slaughtered the parents like lambs.

_I'm a monster._

The same short sentence had plagued him ceaselessly, refusing to let his conciousness be. During the daylight hours, he was paying the consequences for his actions. He wasn't quite able to connect with Elena in the way that he should. She had scrutinized him from the across the room as he had fought to stop his hands from trembled whilst he put together a light picnic. She'd visibly stiffened when she'd noticed the way his brow furrowed as he carelessly shivered the blood bags into the wicker hamper. She wasn't buying his façade at all.

"Ready to go?" Elena asked, getting to her feet, her arms swinging at her sides as she looked Damon up. One thing that could be said about the not-so Gilbert Gilbert daughter, was that she was awful at putting on front's. Whilst she was doing her best to appear unperturbed by the changes she was picking up on in her boyfriend, the concern was written all over her face. Her lack of questioning however, made Damon feel even worse.

Elena was waiting for him to come to her in his own time.

Collecting the hamper, Damon followed her to the old blue Camaro.

He would continue to lie.

_I'm a monster._

* * *

A/N: Short first chapter for you, hope you all enjoy it! :D


	3. Chapter Two

Full Summary: After spending the first month of her summer enjoying every second of her new life with Damon, Elena begins to notice some subtle differences in her lover's behaviour. Worried by the random and unexplainable changes, she sets out to unearth his problems. (Set before 5x01 'I Know What You Did Last Summer. AU.)

All I See  
Chapter Two

_You will never waste my time._

The warm sun caressed Elena's face as she looked out the car window, admiring the rolling scenery of Mystic Falls. It was days such as this, then they weren't constantly under threat from supernatural beings that she could truly appreciate the beauty of her home town, and see it as something more than the congregation point for all things powerful and scary. She could almost go back to believing it was the quaint little town, where everyone knew everything about everyone, where the flare for community spirit was purely because it suffered so much heartbreak throughout the course of history and people wanted to honour it... that it was just a quiet piece of tranquillity, a slice of heaven in a world that was far too noisy.

"I like the sun." Elena remarked, rocking her head back on the head rest. "It makes me feel normal."

"But you wouldn't like it if you weren't wearing your pretty little ring," Damon raised his eyebrows at her before focusing his attention back on the road. Elena rolled her eyes, shaking her head at him. She was about to retort when she paused, catching sight of the tension in Damon's shoulders. Her eyes travelled down his strong arms to his hands. Both were on the steering wheel, all the knuckles white as he gripped it tightly... almost as if he were afraid of driving. Usually, Damon would be lounging about, one hand thrown casually atop the wheel as he spent most of the journey throwing well dressed insults, fussing with the radio and just being a general nuisance.

It was odd - the sudden yet subtle change that she was observing in Damon. He was quiet and reserved, a huge contrast to 'road trip' Damon that she had become used to. The tightness in his body never really left. Whilst his voice exactly the same as always, but the mask of cheer that he was wearing wasn't even remotely convincing. A valiant attempt, but not enough to cover up the shadow of unease that lingered in his blue eyes.

"And here we are." The car rolled to a stop as Damon cut the engine. Pulling the keys from the ignition and stuffing them into his pocket, he threw Elena a quick smile. "Onwards into paradise."

She climbed out the car, trailing after him. Absently, she collected the bag that he had left in the boot of the car for her as her mind trickled slowly over everything that had happened. They had spent barely any time apart. Most of their days had consisted of lying in each others arms, warm and happy as they talked about anything and everything. There was _nothing_ Elena could think of to have caused such an obscure reaction in him. Bewildered, Elena mutely followed him into the Gilbert cabin.

The pine-wood smell that greeted Elena's nostrils brought a feeling of amenity. It was that fresh smell, the smell she associated with home and her parents, the people that had sheltered and protected her until the car had rolled off the bridge, crashing into the river and changing Elena's life forever. Despite the fact that her mom and dad hadn't entered the cabin in years, it was comforting that it still contained all their knick-knacks and homely touches that warmed Elena's bleak thoughts almost immediately. Dumping her bag beside the old worn couch, she stretched, yawning.

"Tired already?" Damon looked down at his watch, raising his eyebrows at her in mock disappointment. "It's only 10.30 in the morning."

Swatting at him, Elena rolled her eyes. "You _know_ how I get on car journeys."

Falling back onto the sofa, Elena rolled onto her side, watching Damon as she twisted a strand of her hair repeatedly through her fingers. She couldn't fathom why on earth he hadn't mentioned what was on his mind yet. In her head, she replayed the first time he had truly opened himself up to her.

/\

_"What's this?" She had been running her fingers across the spines of all his old books, marvelling at the first editions copies that lined the shelves in his bedroom. Then she had caught sight of it, a worn and faded royal blue velvet jewellery case, stashed between two books. Intrigued, she began to slide it from it's place. It was about half way out when the palm of Damon's hand crashed onto Elena's fingers with bone crunching pain, forcing the box back into it's place. _

_"Don't touch what doesn't belong to you!" He snapped, glaring at her with an expression of anger that was so familiar yet so foreign to her. Massaging her fingers, Elena scuffed into him as she stormed from the room, her vision blurred with tears. Angrily, she took refuge in front of the fire. With her knees drawn up to her chest where a pillow was tightly pressed, Elena stared into the crackling embers. _

_The fact that Damon had physically hurt her was shocking enough, but what cut her deeper was the fact that even after all the time they had spent bonding, he still didn't trust her enough to share his life with her. Instead, he was abrupt, stand-offish and sometimes plain mean whenever she tried to wheedle the tiniest dreg of information from him. She had opened up, worn her heart on her sleeve. Told him everything, yet he wouldn't even let her look inside some old box without nearly ripping her apart. It was days such as this, as the rain clattered loudly against the windows of the boarding house, that Elena couldn't help but compare him to Stefan. It was something that she had done time and time again in the past, the good brother versus the bad one. _

_But recently, any thoughts of comparison had been driven from her brain. Until today. As much as she loved Damon, and she knew he loved her, the lack of trust disturbed her. With Stefan, it had existed mutually between them. It still probably did, despite the fact she'd hurt him beyond measure. _

_"Elena..." Damon's voice sounded from behind her, uncertain and oddly quiet. Facing forward, Elena remained silent as she collected her thoughts. She felt the sofa sink slightly beside her as Damon dropped into the seat, his head in his hands. "I'm sorry."_

_"So am I." Elena said abruptly, shaking her head as he spoke. "I'm sorry that even after all this time, you _still _feel like you can't trust me. I know the concept might be utterly foreign to you, but really, a relationship is a two way thing. How the hell is the supposed to work if I'm the only one giving?"_

_As Damon turned to look at her, the flames from the fire illuminated his face. He looked tired. Drained, in fact. He smiled at her then, not his usual infuriating smirk when he was up for an argument, but a sad smile that looked as if it belonged on a little boy rather than a fierce vampire. "I know. I understand. It's just... hard sometimes." _

_Elena shuffled in her place so that she was looking him full in the face. Without hesitation, she took his hands. "I'm here to help make this easier for you, Damon. The more you share, the easier it will get. I know opening up isn't exactly your forte, but sometimes you have to face the things that challenge you so that you can move on."_

_Nodding, Damon broke eye contact with her, looking at their joined hands. Elena just paused, waiting quietly. She'd give him all the time he needed. After a couple of minutes, he looked up again. As if he had drawn comfort from the connection of their hands, he began to speak, his voice barely recognisable as it took on a far-away, dream like quality. "In that box, is a ring. It's white gold, and has a sapphire in the centre. Above it is a curved row of diamonds, and it's the same shape of diamonds below the sapphire too," he broke off, an almost wistful smile crossing his face. "Even though it was of course a woman's ring, it was one that I had always loved. The reason I loved it so much was it because it belonged to my mother, and it was her favourite._

_"When I was small, I had this incessant desire to be close to her. She was the epitome of comfort - when my father was busy slating me and telling me what a useless waste of space I was, I would go to this ring and just look at. It calmed me down. Made me think rationally." Damon shook his head, a dry, humourless laugh tumbling from his lips. "The main reason my father despised me was because I was a walking reminder of the tragic accident in which my mother died. Not only did I look like her, but in his eyes, I was the reason she lost her life."_

_Damon's fingers tightened around Elena's. His face paled at the memory, his entire body seizing up like it were a physical pain. Softly, Elena applied pressure to his hands. "It's ok," she whispered, her voice gentle. "It's really ok."_

_"Being the brilliant child I was, I was convinced that I could do absolutely anything and everything. So when I was nine years old, I argued with dear Stefan and my father before I told them I could go anywhere, and do whatever I pleased. My mother had heard the heated debate, and run after me as I sprinted across the main street, calling for me to come back. She knew that if I was given the chance to go, I'd leave and not come back. Or get lost." Damon's voice tightened. "She didn't get across the main street fast enough. A taxi was running late, and the horses were frenzied. The last time I ever saw her was when her body was pasted to floor under the wheels of a carriage."_

_Elena's heart swelled in her chest as she took in Damon, staring at her as if he expected her to recoil in horror, to blame him for what had happened. Instead she just shook her head, eyes wide with disbelief. Impulsively, she threw her arms around his neck, pulling him to her. For a minute or two, he remained stiff, until he wrapped his arms tightly around her, his face pressed into the crook of her shoulder and her neck. There, they remained in front of the fire, his shoulders shaking slightly as hot trickles of water ran down Elena's back. Her fingers worked their way through his hair, as she realised this was who he was._

_Damon Salvatore, the fiercest man she knew, harbouring years and years worth of baggage. He'd never put it down. Never shared the load. Instead he'd continued to carry it, never realising how stooped and crippled it was making him until he was forced to stare it in the face. As long as he continued to empty his never-ending pile of guilt and suffering, Elena resolved that she would be there to help him. _

/\

From that moment on, he had become a little less complicated, a little less guarded and a whole lot more reasonable. Gradually, he had unburdened things on her. Sometimes remained indifferent and detached from what he described, other times crying softly into her shoulder, his arms tight around her. He had shown many layers to his personality, proved he wasn't the callous person that he let everyone believe him to be. Elena had fallen in love with him, loving him stronger and harder than she'd ever loved a person in her life.

Yet know, when they had come so far and joined so closely, he was receding from her. Pulling back, not sitting near her, nor touching her with that far-away look in his eyes and that guarded expression that she had come to despise. No, not despise. She caught herself quickly. No matter how frustrating he was, she could never hate him. The thought of it made her feel slightly sick.

"Wanna eat something?" Damon called from the kitchen area, breaking through Elena's thoughts. Getting to her feet, she crossed the space, leaning on the breakfast bar.

"Yeah, after that drive I could do with some rejuvenation." She smiled weakly at him, only half-hoping that she was doing a convincing job. In a way, she _wanted _him to pick up on the fact that something was right. At least the way, she had a reason to flip it and just say outright that she was worried at how quickly he'd become distant from her.

Damon passed her blood bag before taking one in his hands. Trying to be inconspicuous, Elena observed him. Using his teeth, just like he always did, he tore the top off and began drinking from the pouch. He only took a couple of sips before he stopped, resting it upright against a bottle of water so it wouldn't spill. The open top caused the scent of blood to fill the room, that metallic, coppery twang that caused Elena's mouth salivate whilst repulsing her at the same time.

_Metallic twang. _

The blood bag in Elena's hands burst as it clicked in her head.

"Damon, what the _hell_ did you do last night?!"


	4. Chapter Three

Full Summary: After spending the first month of her summer enjoying every second of her new life with Damon, Elena begins to notice some subtle differences in her lover's behaviour. Worried by the random and unexplainable changes, she sets out to unearth his problems. (Set before 5x01 'I Know What You Did Last Summer. AU.)

All I See  
Chapter Three

_And it's been a while, since I've gone, and fucked things up...  
Just like I always do._

His world exploded in a shower of blood.

It was in that moment, as a cascade of red droplets coated the surrounding area, that Damon wanted to run. Never before had the flight instinct been powerful within him. It set alight every nerve, causing his body tremble with an almost electric thrum. Kinetic energy pooled up inside. Panic began to set in. Somewhere, he had slipped up. Whatever it was he had done, he knew that he had made a terrible mistake. From the look in those wild brown eyes, he could tell his mistake had cost him the one thing that he held dear.

Wordlessly, he regarded her, fighting for composure.

"Damon, _explain!_" Elena's voice crackled through the space between them, the accusatory tone lashing against his skin like a whip. A dull sting coated his body, a throbbing pain. Was it an impulse to come clean? Or was it the fear of returning to that dark place in his mind? "Damon!"

The sharpness attached to his name was it took to send venom reeling through his body. Lashing out blindly, he spat words at her. "Last night, I snuck out of our room, and under a _beautiful_ moon and stars, I gorged on a poor, innocent family. There was a boy there, about your age. I knocked him out and then _slaughtered _ his parents." He span away from his. His chest was heaving. He didn't want to see her face crumble. He didn't want to see the realisation hit her like a brick wall.

"What?" Barely a whisper, the word floated to him on the static charged air. He could feel the bewilderment, the pain more than he could heard it in her voice. Squeezing his eyes shut, keeping his back facing her, he continued speaking. There was little time to think of the repercussions of his words. This was her get out free card.

For how could he continue to reside with her, feigning the perfect, dutiful boyfriend when he was full of a well of darkness? Every act of horror he committed, he _relished_ in. For someone, that wasn't him, to feel a gut-wrenching pain just once in their lives, was something that he had found himself having a taste for. It had never been the blood that he loved. Not really. It had been the shedding of it that had appealed to him.

He had lived through more heartache and torment in his lifetime that he could stand to bear.

Other people deserved to feel it too.

_I'm a monster._

Of that, he was certain. He was monstrous, the most malevolent of beings, seeking the downfall of those around him. Making people _pay_ for sins of their descendants, making people _hurt_ for his own again.

And God, he hated himself for it.

As much as he would have done anything to change who he was, for her of all people, he just couldn't do it. It wasn't feasible. It had become a part of him, the darkness attached to his soul. Bit by bit, he could feel it consuming him a little more with every passing day. He was walking an unknown path, stumbling through thick trees and thorn bushes, cutting and pricking himself as he went. He had been bleeding out, so close to the miserable end when he had been blessed with a thin beam of light. Like an oil lamp, he had clutched it close to him, keeping it sheltered and protected - untouchable to those that wished to snuff it out. The light had shown him a yellow brick road, a path of hope and happiness. He had stepped a shaky foot onto it. Sometimes, the darkness from the thickets that lined the pathway had dragged him back. But the light had hauled him in the right direction - sometimes forceful, other times with love and gentleness.

But all he knew, was that over one hundred years of his sorry life had filled him with hate and fury. It had set him on his true path. And that was one of self-destruction. He didn't belong on that yellow brick road. He belonged in the darkness, lost and alone until his shameful, chaotic existence was destroyed. All Damon was aware of, was that he kept clinging to the oil lamp, he would snuff it out himself. It would explode with him.

For all the bad things he did, destroying Elena Gilbert would not be one of them.

/\

Just like that, he was gone.

Damon had retreated, faster than she could blink, leaving her standing in a kitchen stained red. Elena could feel herself quivering violently. Despondently, she realised she was not angry with him. In fact, she couldn't feel anything at all. It had been too hasty for her to process. All she was aware of was ringing absence. Mutely, she set to work mopping up the mess she had made. Almost wistfully, she realised she was always clearing up messes. Her own, other peoples. But the one that had been created in that kitchen stretched far further than the counters and the wooden floorboards. It had dashed her heart, infected her brain. Elena was positive it was meddling with his too.

Numbly, she sifted through her memories as she tried to pinpoint any moments where Damon had given the impression of being anything other than a man in love. She came up blank. Of course there had been wobbly moments, there always were with Damon. But he had let her into his heart, shared his fears, his regrets, his worries for the future. Together, they had nearly turned over every stone. Obviously, there had been something that was brewing within his gut. A storm beginning to form within him. It had torn through him like a hurricane, causing him to murder a family in cold blood. With new resolve, Elena pounced into action.

It was Damon-esque, she could have rolled her eyes and slapped herself. All his life, he had been blaming himself for every misdeed and wrong-doing that had occurred around him. Despite how much Elena had preached to him that making mistakes was the most human part of his vampire nature, he still despaired, silently hating himself. Grudgingly, he had begun to accept Elena, to allow her to love him. Grimly, Elena realised that this was just his latest way of punishing himself.

Abandoning the blood and snatching the car keys, Elena leapt into the drivers seat of the black Land Rover. She twisted the key in the ignition, her mind whirring in time with the engine of the auto-mobile. As a vampire without her humanity, Elena had been able to align her thoughts with a frightening rationality. Her her eyelids fluttered a little as she fought to muster up that way of calculated thinking without losing herself. If her plan was going to work, she needed to be two steps ahead. It took her seconds to work out where he end up next.

New York.

Jamming her foot onto the gas, Elena spun the steering wheel, the tyres screeching as she sped back onto the road, only one sentence encompassing her being.

_I'm never giving up on you._


	5. Chapter Four

Full Summary: After spending the first month of her summer enjoying every second of her new life with Damon, Elena begins to notice some subtle differences in her lover's behaviour. Worried by the random and unexplainable changes, she sets out to unearth his problems. (Set before 5x01 'I Know What You Did Last Summer. AU.)

All I See  
Chapter Four

_All the stories of my past I can't erase._

New York city was thriving with activity. Flood of tourists occupied every corner, chatting noisily as they laughed their way through the door, clutching bulging bags of shopping, fingertips tapping against smart phones, headphones pressed in ears. Elena was overcome with a stricken sense of awe, as for the first time she was able to truly appreciate the cover that the hive of the United States was able to give a vampire. The first and only time that she had been her, her appreciation had been dulled out by the numbness that came with having little to no humanity whatsoever.

She was in New York, because in the 70's, it had become Damon's playground. Even though it emphasised a potentially abysmal period of his life, it was the blanket of safety that Mystic Falls had never been for him. He could dive in out of crowds, doing what he pleased, unnoticed by everyone. There had been nobody he cared about to worry for, nothing that could possibly hurt him. New York meant being invulnerable. It was only natural that he sought to return to the place that gave him both freedom and security.

Rubbing a hand across her forehead, Elena tried to picture the grotty underground bar that Damon had carted her to on their last trip to the Big Apple. A crappy half broken neon light that read the name '_Billy's' _in an old script flashed briefly through her mind. Right. The place had been half lit, stinking of sweat and practically solidly packed with bodies that seemed to clash horridly against each other, yet convulse as one at the same time. It had been the perfect place for her humanity-less self to gorge herself stupid on blood and drink way too much cheap alcohol. Shaking of the embarrassment, Elena strode forward, reminding herself that wasn't who she was. Not any more.

She was here for Damon, not to get ashamed about her own indiscretions.

It didn't take her long to locate that same half-broken sign. Ignoring the 'closed' tab that was stuck at a lopsided angle to the darkened glass of the door, Elena twisted the knob and pushed it open. Of course it would be unlocked. The state of disrepair showed that the guy who now ran the joint had a complete lack of care for what went down within the gritty underground club. Quietly, she descended the steps that led to the dingy bar and dance floor.

For once, she allowed herself to appreciate a small perk of her vampiric abilities - her eyes barely even needed a millisecond to adjust to the change in the light conditions. Looking about her, Elena's eyes instantly snagged onto the figure of a young male who looked just a little older than her, slouched in a bare stool. Stacks of notes and coins were piled to his right, a metallic clinking ringing out in the quiet space as he repeatedly muttered numbers under his breath.

"Excuse me?" Elena called. Her voice, though loaded with politeness and a tone of gentle enquiry, still managed to startle the man. The jolt that went through his body caused his arms to jerk, sending the towers of coins spilling to the floor with a loud crash. Elena winced as the man began to curse, shaking his fists angrily at the mess of money at his feet. She should have seen it coming.

The man turned, fingers curled into tight fists, his broad shoulders taut. He was ready to fight whatever idiot had ruined his counting. His face contorted into an image of pure rage, he advanced on her. That was, until he caught sight of her face and pulled up short. "Do I know you?" He was squinting at her now, his eyes raking from her feet to her face and all the way back down again.

"Um..." Elena cast her mind back to her first visit to Billy's. She remembered throwing dazzling smiles to the barman as she collected drinks and buried her teeth into the necks of the drunk dancers. Her cheeks flushing pink with embarrassment, she nodded. "I came her a couple of months back actually."

Recognition stirred within the man, causing an almost mechanical drop of tension from his body. "Oh right. You're the girl that came here with the blonde chick and that Damon Salvatore."

_Damon Salvatore. _He'd been gone barely a day, yet hearing someone else say his name was enough to cause a dull throb in the depths of her heart. _Stop it,_ she chastised herself. _Turn that misery into determination. _"Yeah, that's right." Seeing the apprehensive look in the man's eyes, Elena held up her hands. "Just so you're aware, I'm not here to eat people and cause chaos. I... I'm not actually like that. I was just in a bad place back then."

The man snorted. "Of course you were. Damon clearly wasn't, so he decided to bring another vampire who was spiralling toward the sweet space of psychopathic tendencies."

"What?" Elena echoed, dumbfounded. If his words meant what she thought they did, it proved her theory right. Forcing back the excitement and preparing herself to be disappointed, Elena asked: "What do you mean?"

"I _mean," _the man began, folding his arms as he shot her an irritated glare. "that Billy always said Damon came here when he was off the rails. Always said some crap about New York being so alive that nobody really noticed a little death. In other words, when he was at his darkest points in life, he would come swanning into this here club, kill and slaughter as many as he wanted, then when he found some sort of resolve or reason for living like a normal person again, he be on his merry way."

_I was right. _

/\

After a couple of hours of conversation, Elena had learned that the barman's name was Sam Reynolds. Whilst he didn't have anything else particularly illuminating to tell Elena in the way of Damon Salvatore himself, Sam was positively entertaining. Overcoming his initial distaste with her due to her inappropriate behaviour on their first encounter, and the introduction that lead to the demise of his carefully stacked wealth, Sam had grudgingly handed over a few drinks.

Now that his expression was unmarred by portrayals of frustration and rage, Elena could see that he was quite good-looking. He had a classically boyish looking face, albeit a little sallow due to the lack of sunlight it was exposed to, but handsome nonetheless. He was easy to get along with, someone who exuded laughter and an enthusiasm for life. Then how was it, that he had come to be the leaseholder of a squatty club built into the foundations of New York city?

When Elena confronted him with the question, it momentarily threw him a little. The laughter lines smoothed out of his face his eyes drifted upwards, considering. "Billy looked after me when I was a homeless wreck. Took me in. Gave me a place to stay, a decent job. All the free alcohol I wanted," a wistful smile crossed his face. "When Billy... you know. I just carried on with the place. It makes a hell of a good turnover and churns out profits, but it's still just not the same without him."

Elena nodded, understanding just what Sam meant. She could relate to his loss. After all, she had experienced ever kind of loss imaginable. "So why is it, Miss Elena, that you are so desperate to find Damon Salvatore, of all people?"

It didn't take a second for her to answer. Nonchalantly, she took a swig from her glass. "Because I happen to be in love with him." It was a simple answer, one that she felt the truth of deep within the fibre of her being. There was no arguing with it - the fact she had fallen head over heels for one of the craziest, most impulse vampires on the planet was unshakeable. There was no leeway. It just was what it was.

After the happiness he had brought her, the reignition of passion and love in her life just when she thought she was about to lose it all meant that she owed him everything. Whilst he could argue forever that he wasn't deserving of it, Elena could think of a thousand reasons to protest to that notion.

"In love with Damon Salvatore huh.." Sam's voice trailed off, his head bobbing in a series of nods as he drank deeply from his pint glass.

"Why are you nodding?" Elena asked, an eyebrow cocking upward. It was rare that people accepted the fact it was possible for someone to fall in love with him. The fact that Sam was so readily nodding his approval after bitterly spitting insults about the vampire that had so constantly risked destroying Billy's business took her aback.

"I'm nodding, because I get it." Sam placed his glass back on the bar top and looked carefully at Elena. He leaned a little closer to her, his voice loaded with conviction as he spoke. "When Billy first told me about Damon, he said that there were a lot of things Damon lacked. Love was one of them. He was crazy, he was selfish... God he was downright evil sometimes when it came down to it, but unloveable was not one of them. Billy loved him like a brother. His way of describing the pattern of Damon's like was 'Just when you'd start thinking he was cool, he'd go and do some awful thing that made you think he was an idiot.' The way I see it, that vampire of yours set out to reject love. Not because he doesn't want it, but because he only lets himself have what he thinks he's deserving of." Wisely, Sam gave an assertive, singular nod. Wiping his hands on his jeans, he muttered something about still having some tables to clear.

Leaving Elena alone with nothing but a bar stool and alcohol, the truth of his words circled through her brain on an endless loop. Sam was completely right. It made sense. Damon had spent his life living in a pit of regret and self-loathing. That misery had been what had driven him through life. The people he loved had a habit of leaving. Misery and despair was constant. Anger and hate was constant. It made sense, to hold onto the things that were familiar, to push away the foreign and potentially scary experiences.

It all made sorry, sad sense.

/\

_New York. My favourite place to create a bloodbath. _Damon stood in the centre of the bustling sidewalk, hands placed firmly on his hips as he stared around him, allowing the atmosphere to seep through the pores of his skin, through the layers of flesh and muscle, penetrating his bones. New York was alive inside him. What he needed to do in order to forget the chaos he had caused the previous day, was to bloat himself on the hot scarlet liquid that kept his joints oiled. Whilst he found the prospect of engaging in dangerous, violent activity invigorating, New York didn't _become_ him in the way it used to.

Instead, he was all to aware of her presence. She was everywhere. She was in every single hair salon he passed, swanning out, a sway in her hips, a blood red streak through her hair as it fell in natural waves over her shoulders. In every bar and club he passed, he could see her, half smeared in blood with a vacant expression in her eyes, soulless and uncaring as she tore through chunks of flesh. Signs of no humanity Elena were beating him down wherever he turned. Angrily, Damon cursed himself for ever having the audacity to think that returning to New York city would be a good idea. After all, he had wrecked it's purity of being something that just belonged to him when he had carted Elena to the Big Apple only several months ago.

It had done neither of them good.

So why did he think that this time, it would be any different?

_Maybe because it's miles away from where I left her. _A pang of guilt and remorse yanked on Damon's heartstrings, causing his jaw to clench in discomfort. Acknowledging the way in which he had left her, standing rigid, petrified into position was a physical pain. No - more than that. It was agony.

It was all he could do to not collapse to the floor in the middle of public and tear his own internal organs out. _He had hurt Elena. _Of all the things he had hoped to do in his time with her, that was not one of them. However, things he never intended to do always had an unfortunate habit of occurring anyway. His main example happened to be the way he had never intended to become a live experiment for a bone-saw happy surgeon, but hey, that had also become a significant event his life.

He cringed away from the memory, but it was too late. He had let himself think, and it was encompassing him.

/\

_The smell of dirt and dust infiltrated his nostrils as he groggily pulled himself from the swamp of nausea and darkness. Blinking to clear his blurred vision, Damon Salvatore became alert to one thing only. The bars. He flew to them, colliding painfully against the cold metal, his fingers wrapping tightly around their width as his powerful arms tensed against them. His entire body jerked back, muscles rippling beneath his skin as he fought to break them, bend them, _anything. _When they did not yield, he was overcome with a raw panic so intense it had him crashing forcefully into the brick walls. His impact made no disruption to the clay and mortar, but left him overexerted, breathless and panting miserably, face down in the grime._

_Grimly, he realised that his fatigue was down to the vervain that was occupying his system. As memories of Joe's betrayal began to shroud him, he felt the painful prick in his back all over again, followed by the crashing of hard floor on his knees. He had managed to snap Joe's neck, but somehow, he had still ended up behind bars, caged like an animal. _

_"How goes our friend?" A smooth and silky voice sounded from the gloom that obscured everything on the other side of the bars. With a strangled cry, Damon threw himself at them, forcing his harms between the tight spaces, flailing wildly as he tried to grab for the person. But they were concealed by the ever-present darkness. The lack of clarity choked Damon. For the first time since 1864, Damon Salvatore was afraid. _

_"Apparently, not good." An amused laughter brushed across Damon's skin. Flinching at the sound of someone delighting so much in his misfortune, Damon slid to the floor, his forehead leaning against the coldness of the metal bars. Following a shot pause, there was the sound of match being struck before a flickering, orange glow softly illuminated the surrounding area. The darkness on the other side of the bars dwindled, revealing nothing but a bleak corridor, the walls made up of enormous heavy stones. The smooth belonged to a middle aged man, pale skinned and light haired. His lips were a soft pink, thin and cruel. His eyes were black, glittering like writhing beetles in their sockets. Everything about the man, from the way he leaned a little closer to the bars, a manic smile emblazoned across his features, the sultry smoothness of his disconcerting voice told Damon he was someone evil. _

_"Welcome to Augustine, 20151!" _

* * *

A/N: okaaay so here was a bit of a longer chapter for you!

For the purpose of this AU, I've done away with Enzo (sorry if anyone was wanting that) I just think it makes it a whole lot more a desperate situation and a claustrophobic environment if he's utterly alone.

As always, thank you so much for all the reviews you leave. I'm also greatly appreciating the follows and favourites, and even if you just read and decide you don't like it, thanks for giving it a chance anyway :D

If you have any questions, just ask away! :)


	6. Chapter Five

Full Summary: After spending the first month of her summer enjoying every second of her new life with Damon, Elena begins to notice some subtle differences in her lover's behaviour. Worried by the random and unexplainable changes, she sets out to unearth his problems. (Set before 5x01 'I Know What You Did Last Summer. AU.)

All I See  
Chapter Five

_So much hate for the ones we love._

He had announced it, just like that. A ringing introduction that simultaneously evoked fear in his heart and meant absolutely nothing; a terrifying paradox of emotions that clashed horribly against each other. Weakly, Damon realised that those two contrasting emotions were simply the first small slithers of the walking paradox he had become - a mess consisting of binary opposites within him, mainly consisting or morally right and wrong, always fighting for dominion of his soul.

Damon was sat dully outside a small cafe, the sun warm against his face as he tortured himself repeatedly with disjointed flashes of his time as the Augustine vampire. Tightness around his limbs. Cold metal beneath his back. Excruciating pain his chest. The point of scalpel rushing to meet his eye. All things that he wished he could forget, but seemed impossible to let go of.

Yet most agonising of all, was the image of her face that haunted him, strong and clear whether his eyes were open and closed. Every time he saw the back of a slender brunettes head, he was unable to tear his eyes from her - a small part hopeful, a larger part fearful that it would be Elena Gilbert. Again, the truth of his paradoxical nature seemed to laugh at him teasingly. Of course he would fall in love with the only girl in the world who had the power to both fix and tear him apart at the same time.

"Hey, we gotta put the tables away!" A sharp bark erupted from a hunk of a man standing above Damon, hands on his hips glowering. Momentarily confused, it took Damon a second to realise that the day had melted swiftly into a humid evening. The sky was turning a violet that was tinged with orange. The remainders of the tourists that still littered the streets were holding out camera phones as the lights of skyscrapers began to twinkle against the velvet sky. Pictures were snapped as they all admired the view, in total awe of the almost surreal setting.

The only thing Damon was in awe of was how fast the time had seemed to flow by.

Without a word to the angry cafe manager, Damon smoothly got to his feet, a familiar itch beginning in his fingertips that flooded through his body. His throat felt as coarse and as dry as sandpaper, his limbs significantly weaker than when he had started out his day. He was hungry.

For the first time since he had allowed Elena fully into his life, he managed to make a quick decision about how he would feed. Without her there to drag him back, to reproachfully reprimand, to question his morals, Damon was free to eat how he wished. Initially, he was thrilled by the prospect before a wave of revulsion brought him back to earth with a crash. It wasn't Elena's fault that she was so self-righteous. It was a blessing; not a problem. She was untaintable, a perfect white angel.

Damon stood, lit by the yellow-white glow of a tall street lamp. Briefly, he considered his options of where to dine. Although really, there was only ever one real answer. Billy's. The place was always heaving, full of the alternative types. Some masochistic, the whole pain thing getting them going. Meaning that sometimes compulsion wasn't necessary until after the event, where he would wipe their minds of the entire event.

_Snatch, eat, erase._

/\

Drawn like moths to a flame, the alcohol thirsty and sex-crazed customers began to flood down the steps to Billy's. Within minutes, the place was packed. Seeing that Sam was hopelessly understaffed, Elena ducked in behind the bar, slotting casually in as she shot beaming smiles at the humans that repeatedly appeared for additional purposes. Elena was aware of the roaming eyes of the males, settling blearily on chest. She could hear them craning their necks as she bent down to retrieve low set drinks, just trying as hard as they could to catch sight of her rear.

It was all amusing to her, really. When she was human and frail, it had been the things such as that which had worried her most. However, with the vampire blood pumping through her veins, she knew all it took was a flick of a finger to put them in their place. Still, she remained behind the bar, only half taking notice of what she was doing. Mechanically, she handed out beers, collected change, wiped glasses. Her eyes had a habit of returning the door... just watching, just waiting.

After two hours of mindless work that left her with aching cheeks from the false smile plastered across her face, he had entered the building. Instantly, Elena's breath became lodged in place in her throat. Despite that fact it had been barely an entire day since they had parted company, her heart ached for him. She just wanted to propel herself towards him, to wrap her arms around his neck, to cling to tightly to him. To never let go. However, the rational thinking that she had adopted snapped her into action. Disappearing to a darkened corner, Elena sat, concealed by the shadows, watching.

Damon Salvatore approached the bar, an expression of utmost confidence and that smouldering smile that was enough to make Elena's chest burn horribly. Immediately recognised by Sam, the barman wordlessly handed over an entire bottle of expensive bourbon before he began to tend to the next customers needs. The raven haired vampire remained by the bar, engaging in small talk with those around him, handsome face creased into a bright smile that didn't meet his cold blue eyes. Whilst his posture was relaxed, one arm on the bartop as he rested his weight on it, the other hand occupying the bottle of alcohol, the ways his eyes tracked the room told Elena something different. Smooth and calculating, he was assessing the space. When his eyes snagged onto something , or someone, the difference in him was blindingly clear.

Bourbon still clasped in one hand, Damon moved into the midst of the dancers. His motions were beautifully fluid, so extraordinary and inhuman in comparison to the heaving mass of bodies, bumping and grinding against each other. He gracefully intercepted the crowd, a cunning wolf among of herd of clueless sheep. Elena sat, immobile, oddly transfixed by what was unfolding before her very eyes. Damon's arms had wrapped around the waist of a girl with bleached blonde hair, her hips swaying in rhythm to the pumping music, hands high above her head, eyes closed. On the intimate contact with another human being, they fluttered open, grey and surprised yet welcoming of the handsome stranger. She didn't see him for the predator he was.

He whispered something to her, their faces only centimetres apart.

That was when Elena snapped.

She thought he was about to kiss her.

Flying the crowd, using her strength to send bodies sprawling to floor, she grabbed his shoulders, fingers digging hard into his flesh as she tore him away from the girl. His eyes widened to a more circular shape, filled with surprise at the strength of his interceptor. Then, they were quietly bewildered as he realised she had seen the whole event. Elena opened her mouth to say something, _anything_, but he was gone before the words even had a chance to leave her lips. Unspoken sentences balanced on the tip of her tongue, she sped after him, following the lingering scent of his cologne.

The trail led her to the roof of the building. Over encumbered by a nasty sense of deja vu, Elena drew to a stop a couple of feet behind him. He was standing at the edge of the building, facing away from her as he looked across the series of rooftops of New York. For a moment, she found herself able to appreciate the view that stretched endlessly out before her, Damon's silhouette painted against the waxy sky. It would have been perfect, had it not been for the circumstances surrounding the reasons they were there.

"How did you know I'd come here?" Damon's voice was an Arctic wind, crumbling the futile hope that coated her heart.

"You really aren't as wild and predictable as you think you are, Damon." Elena explained, folding her arms as he slowly turned to face her. "You have a pattern, just like everyone else."

"I get it. You realised New York was the next place I'd go, you remember me taking you to this place before, you ask some questions, get confirmation, feel smug." Damon snorted, his face as hard as stone. Elena forced herself not to recoil at the blatant hostility in his voice. "Well get this, Elena, and get this now. I do not fit into a pattern."

"Damon, please!" Elena appealed to him, a glassy wall of tears building up around her eyes, her vision blurring. All she needed was him to open up, to tell her the truth. Then they could move past it, they could heal from the bump their journey had brought them and become a team again. "I just need to know why!"

That was when she made her fist mistake.

She reached out for him, her hands seeking any kind of warmth, any piece of the version of him that she loved the most. She needed comfort, peace. Love. God only knew how much he needed him too. But as her fingers lightly closed around one of his wrists, she felt her arms being bent roughly back. There was a nauseating crack which left Elena staring down at her own limbs, too stunned to feel anything. Slowly, she lifted her deep brown eyes to meet the piercing blue that stared at her. Mutely, he fled.

Elena collapsed to the floor, her heart hammering in her chests.

It wasn't the physical pain that caused a cry to erupt from her mouth. It was the torment of betrayal, the excruciating agony of realising that perhaps, after all, she had lost him.


	7. Chapter Six

Full Summary: After spending the first month of her summer enjoying every second of her new life with Damon, Elena begins to notice some subtle differences in her lover's behaviour. Worried by the random and unexplainable changes, she sets out to unearth his problems. (Set before 5x01 'I Know What You Did Last Summer. AU.)

All I See  
Chapter Six

_My tears don't fall,  
__They crash around me._

Doubled over, fists pounding over and over again into the concrete, Damon felt himself choking on tears. The moment he had broken Elena's bones, forcing her to her knees, everything in the world had ceased to exist. He thought he had known agony before... but all of it was _nothing _compared to the trauma in his heart. In an effort to make her realise that he wasn't good for her, that he wasn't the right person for her to be with, he had hurt her. Physically. Emotionally. It didn't bring the satisfaction that he thought it would bring; after all, it meant that she would be free now, didn't it?

Instead, he felt sick. It felt as if someone were slowly extracting each of his organs, severing the ties that bound them. In a hot flush, he felt himself being dragged back by the arms of the memories he wished he could be rid of forever.

/\

_His chest heaved as he panted for breath, his teeth grinding together as he bit back the wail that he knew would escape his lips. Self-control was all he had. Stripped naked, with no dignity, he was tied to the stiff medical bed. Lying flat, he was strapped down by heavy buckles that circles his wrists, ankles and neck. It had become tedious, to go through the same thing every day - being dragged from his cell where they plunged yet more vervain into his system, beating him into submission before they wrestled him onto the rigid piece of metal. _

_That's when the torture would begin._

_Always the same, yet different everytime. Intense pain would shoot through his body as a scalpel was inserted into his flesh, cutting a neat shape. Damon would feel the hot blood leaking from his body. Later, when he got back to his cell, his pale skin would be stained a dull crimson. Every time, the stain got bigger. Dully, he wondered if he'd be red for the rest of his life. _

_Dr Whitmore's face loomed above Damon's. The man's brow was creased in frustration. Slowly, he brought his face closer to Damon's. "What's this? A stronger display of will power? I wonder how long you'll remain silent when I begin to cut out your lungs."_

_There was an incessant ringing in Damon's ears as Dr Whitmore went about his work, chortling darkly under his breath in a way so light-hearted and softly it sounded as if it were coming to a child. As sweat began to pour from Damon's body, he cursed the piercing ring. Why wouldn't it shut up? _

_It remained for the duration of the procedure, blood and gore oozing out from the gash across Damon's midriff, fragments of shattered ribs poking out, stopping the jagged flaps of flesh and skin from healing. As he was dumped roughly back into his solitary cell, Damon realised that ringing had stopped, dwindling to nothing but a strange, wet, strangled noise. _

_A singular shot glass of blood was pushed between the bars. The thick door of the torture chamber closed, shutting out every tendril of light. In the dark, Damon's finger tips brushed against the cold glass of the minute amount of the red liquid, that blessed red liquid that sustained him just enough to remain alive. _

_As he slowly sipped it down, savouring every last drop, Damon realised that the piercing high pitched ring had not been some form of medical instrument, but a noise from his own vocal chords. _

/\

"Hey, hey, hey! Shh, it's alright, keep calm!" Sam Reynolds fought to control the flailing Elena Gilbert. As her hand flung out, slapping against the side of his face in a wild panic, he winced in pain. Trying to physically console a vampire hadn't been the wisest decision he'd made in life. Resorting to other methods, he began recycling useless information to the troubled brunette. "Casey Laddleton was reported missing two weeks ago, but really she just ran away from home because her mother spends her days hiding in the corners smoking pot and bringing random men home. She's a really nice person, quite good-looking too... very kind hearted despite her upbringing. Do you think I should offer her a job and a place here? Although I'd be worried that working behind the bar would be a bit to rough for her. What'dya think? Elena? Hey, Elena? Elena? Do you think that I should?"

Slowly, Sam saw that his babble was washing over her, lessening the panic she was trapped within. Taking deep, calming breaths, her chest began to rise and fall normally, only slightly laboured. Her face stretched tight across her face, she looked up at him with those overly expressive, liquid brown eyes. "Take her in. Everyone needs someone to care for them." For some reason, she grimaced, as if her words caused her physical pain.

Utterly bewildered, Sam rushed to the taps behind the bar, filling a large glass of water. In his haste to return it to Elena, he ended up sloshing most of it across the floor as he went. The spillage only served as a reminder of the disaster he had to clean up before he opened again that night. He had managed to get all of his punters out, surprisingly efficiently and quickly. All it took was for him to cut the lights and the music, to feign disappointment and announce in a booming voice that they had had a power cut, and everyone had better clear out if they knew what was good for them. Really, he had seen followed Elena and the volatile dark haired man up the rickety metal staircase, standing out of sight in the shadows, watching through a crack in the door as he ruthlessly snapped the arms of the person that loved him.

Sam didn't know why he had felt such an obligation to sure that Elena was ok, but he couldn't ignore the twang in his chest that said he was doing the right thing. Billy had always told him to trust his heart, so that was what he had just done. Truth to be told, despite the fact that he had spent barely any time with Elena Gilbert, he knew exactly why he wanted to help. Beautiful, independent and utterly in love, he was rooting for her. He had seen the desperate way in which Damon Salvatore had looked at her pitiful form, a bundle of shock and betrayal slumped on the rooftop. Before the erratic vampire had fled into the night, he had been just simply standing. An array of emotions had flickered across his handsome face, but what had lodged itself firmly into Sam's mind was the haunted, gaunt look in the man's eyes. The blue, though still piercing, was not fiery but defeated. The shell of the man he had once been, someone fierce and passionate was fading fast, leaving nothing but a person who was completely lost. Completely lost and unspeakably broken.

"I don't want I'm supposed to do," Elena spluttered miserably placing the glass down on the table beside her. "What do I do, Sam?" In a matter of hours, Sam realised Elena was losing her own fight. The girl who had entered his bar, so determined and strong-willed had faded into a watery mess, weak and limp as she sat slack shouldered on her stool.

"I don't know," he said truthfully, rubbing at his jaw. "All I know, is that that man is broken. His been torn apart by something, ripped into pieces. They're attached to him by loose threads, but the threads are almost worn through. He needs to be stitched back together. Piece by piece."

Sam nodded at her, feeling the truth in his own words. He had never been particularly certain of anything in his life before. He had flitted from place to place, starving, not aware of what his next meal would be, let alone ideas of the future. He wasn't sure how long he was going to last running Billy's. But what he was sure of, was that this elegant young woman was _supposed_ to be with that dark and dangerous man.

/\

Damon walked without direction, enveloped in the darkness. Once, Caroline Forbes had confronted him with a question that he had been able to easily brush off. She had looked at him enquiringly, eyes squinting in confusion, head cocked to one side as she asked in her sickly sweet voice: _"Why do you prefer the dark so much to the sun?"_ Breezily, he had responded with a reply that obviously made the simpering idiot feel stupid. He had merely raised his eyebrows at her, explaining that his preference of the night came from the fact that he wasn't particularly keen on daylight - if he lost his ring, he wouldn't tan or turn a beetroot red like humans. He disintegrated into a pile of smoking ashes.

Embarrassed, Caroline had returned to her busy-body life, without the giving question a second thought. Like many people in the world, Caroline Forbes was happy to hear exactly what she was spoon fed. The reality of the matter, was that he preferred the night and the darkness, because of the security it brought him. Every time he had been taken into the light, Damon had been subjected to horrors that nobody, not even the worst of criminals, should be exposed to. Every time afterwards, when his broken body would begin it's slow return to normalcy, he would be in that darkness, sat in the very back corners of his cell, willing the light to never spill through that abnormally thick door ever again.

That was why, after stealing a car which he ditched at the side of a desolate road when the fuel ran out, he had switched to remaining on foot, slipping into the dense forest. Instantly, he knew it was forest that surrounding Mystic Falls. The Mystic Falls area had a distinctive smell to it. Whilst the natural mossy, earthy dirt smell that was found in every outdoors area surrounded Damon, he picked up on the gag worthy scent that lingered in the background. It was unnoticed by many unless they were truly aware of it. Once you were aware of it, it was unable to escape from it.

Mystic Falls stunk of rot, reeking of death and loss.

Again, Damon realised how hopelessly messed up he was. The smell was disgusting, yet it was one that brought him comfort. For it was one of the few things in his life that remained constant. People always left, things always changed... but that putrid stench, the thick, pungent musky _dead _smell was always there, to remind of who he was. Of what he was.

_Lots of thing change,_ he mused, grounding to a halt, concealed by the dense woodland. _But I don't._

_I'm a monster._

/\

Elena could smell him. The scent of his skin was clinging to the leaves of the trees, the thorns that jutted out from the thickets in the wood. It was like she was surrounded by him. He was everywhere and no-where at the same time. Encased in the familiarity of it, Elena found her heart racing in her chest. He had come back to Mystic Falls.

She had felt it in her chest, as she had slowly regained a sense of thought, sat in Sam's bar. Somehow, Elena had just _known_ that Damon was going home. She had bade a thank you to her new found friend before heading on her way back home. After several hours on the road, Mystic Falls loomed up ahead. The dense woodland that encircled the small town had never before seemed so ominous. Ditching the Range Rover, Elena had hopped out of the car. Thus she had found herself, surrounded by the foliage of her home town.

Closing her eyes, Elena tried to focus on his essence, not just his scent. But he was everywhere and no where at the same time. Desperately, she fought for something, an inkling of _anything_ that could lead her to him. That was when she smelt it. The hot metallic twang that made her gums ache and her heart throb. He had hurt someone, again. Surging forward, Elena plunged through the forest, her only thoughts of blood.

Blood, the scarlet liquid that had both cursed and blessed her all at once. The thing that had bound her to the love of her life, the thing that had driven him away from her and the thing that would bring them back together. As she skittered around the girth of a thick tree trunk, Elena skidded to a halt. He was there.

His arms were wrapped tightly around the body of a pale brunette woman, his teeth embedded deep into her neck. He was drinking deeply. What little colour the poor woman still possessed was draining from her pallid skin. As her life's blood was sucked away from her, a shudder left her body, almost like a sigh of relief. The pain was over. Now she was floating to that place beyond.

Damon Salvatore pulled back.

Then he froze.

A mixture of emotions fought for possession of his face, clashing horribly against one another. Anger, guilt, bewilderment, horror, hatred... all of them rushed across him.

His lips drew back against his teeth, those razor sharp canines flashing dangerously at her. He was snarling, his body crouched over in a predatory stance as her surveyed her through dark hostile eyes. There was something in that snarl, so vicious and evil that had Elena had never seen him before. Yet still, she stood her ground. When she had first turned that corner, and he ripped his face back from the camper's throat, he had been terrified. It was that vulnerability, that chink in his armour that let Elena know that she was doing the right thing... because if he was still horrified by the prospect of Elena seeing him as a cold-blooded killer, he still cared.

"Haven't you followed me enough?" He growled, his body slinking into the predators crouch. His face glistened in the moonlight, wet with blood. "What do I have to do, to make you realise that I'm a bad person, that I'm _nothing_ but evil! Let me go, Elena!"

_You still care._

"Damon, just let me speak!" Elena protested, shaking her head furiously at him. "I am never going to stop following you. I am going to press on, and I am going to get some sense into you, or so help me! I don't hate you, you hate yourself enough as it is? Isn't self-loathing punishment enough-"

"Stop Elena." His voice was quieter, filled with caution and danger. "Stop it."

She did not heed his warning.

"NO!" The protest exploded from her, echoing through the trees of the woods surrounding their home town. "Because there is nothing you could possibly do to make me hate you! When are you ever going to understand? I can't let go of you, because I love you!"

"What have I ever done, in the entirety of my sorry, sorry life to deserve you?" He screamed the words, saliva flying from his mouth. He was red-faced, tears leaking down his cheeks. "Why are you still around?! Why can't you just let go?!"

"Damon I love-"

"_LET GO!" _Guttural. Primitive. Anguished. Elena froze, unflinching as he advanced on her. She remained standing, paralysed as he ran at her, his face contorted into an mixture of expressions that were utterly unreadable. As he rounded on her, she was acutely aware of the fact that he was about to plunge his fist into her chest, shattering her ribcage as he jerked her still beating heart from her chest. Strangely, she was at peace with the knowledge. If there was one way she wanted to die, she wanted it to be with Damon Salvatore still holding her heart.

His body collided with hers. The severity of the impact drove all the air from her lungs. A shock-waves of pain rang continuously through her body, Elena was vaguely aware of a falling sensation. _Is this what it's like to die at the hands of a lover?_

Darkness swamped over her, pulling her gently back to a place where she could no longer think, nor feel.


	8. Chapter Seven

Full Summary: After spending the first month of her summer enjoying every second of her new life with Damon, Elena begins to notice some subtle differences in her lover's behaviour. Worried by the random and unexplainable changes, she sets out to unearth his problems. (Set before 5x01 'I Know What You Did Last Summer. AU.)

All I See  
Chapter Seven

_Please don't get me rescued._

_Is this what it's like to be dead? _

The thought floated through her and out of her, suspended in the air before her eyes as if she could see the words, written in a flowing eloquent script. She wanted to reach out and touch the letters that shimmered before her very eyes, but her arms were too heavy to move. _Strange, _she thought absently. _I had always thought that when you died you were lighter than air. _As soon as the thought occured to her, Elena found herself sadly considering that is was just another human misconception... just another thing that she wouldn't be able to tell the people she was leaving behind. The great white light that you travel toward, the events of your life unfurling before your eyes... none of it was there. There was nothing but darkness, eternal and consistent in it's feeling of emptiness, the promise of no life, of demise.

It was frightening in it's intensity, the power of it. It was almost as if it was crushing her, like a lead weight pressed into her chest as she gulped for air. _Gulping for air? _Again, Elena was confused. The weight was all around her, squeezing across her shoulders, particularly heavy at the space where her shoulders met her neck, solid and uncomfortable on her back. _Chest. Back. Neck. Shoulders. Breathing. _

Not dead, but alive.

Slowly, her sense of being returned to her, flooding her with both roaring heat and freezing cold. The two conflicting temperatures fought for control, possessing her and driving all thoughts of rationalisation from her brain. It took several minutes for Elena to distinguish the cold that covered the broad expanse of her back was the soil of the woodland that surrounded Mystic Falls, the soil of home. The heat came from the weight on top of her. A weight that didn't hold the stillness and pressure that lead would have on her lungs, but a quivering mess... a person.

_Damon. _

Memory flooded back to her. Disjointed flashes of his face surging toward her, a crash that rattled every bone inside her body as she fell back to the meet the ground, her own certainty that her life was over. But it wasn't. She was there, lying with him... his arms wrapped tightly around her, his shoulders shaking as his face pressed even tighter into the skin of her neck as if he had a hope of using her to quell the tears that fell uncontrollably from his eyes, leaving scorching hot trails of wetness down her shoulders.

He was murmuring something incoherent, the words caught up in tears and muffled from the way in which he had pressed himself against her. The same four words over again.

_"You are so stupid."_

Slotting her hands around his upper arms, Elena heaved the vampire off her chest, scooting back from as she gulped in lungfuls of icy air. "You are so stupid." He said it again, tear tracks glittering down his pale voice, those blue eyes impossibly bright with the shining wetness of tears.

Of all the faces of Damon Salvatore that Elena had seen, this was one that she was not accustomed to. She had seen him contorted with rage, animalistic with fury, despondent with defeat, fiery with determination... but never had she seen him so horribly vulnerable, tears dripping openly down his face in relentless streams. This was a Damon Salvatore that she had never encountered before - a Damon Salvatore with all his scars ripped apart to bleed on everything, on everyone present. A Damon Salvatore that was an open book. An open, broken book.

* * *

A/N: huge huge **HUGE **apology for my lengthy absence! I've been going through a rough patch with my personal life and just trying to sort myself out - usually writing helps me but I was too distressed and locked up in my own mind to get anything decent out, hence why this chapter is so shockingly short but this is just to get me back into the swing of things as well as to show you that I am not dead!

Huge thank you to 'DELoveFic' who always leaves me such kind words on everything I write!

and of course to 'HippoPoo' who was waiting for me to give her answers at college and I still remained silent. Love you bby gal!

And thanks to anyone who reads/reviews/favourites/followers you are all fabulous!


	9. Chapter Eight

Full Summary: After spending the first month of her summer enjoying every second of her new life with Damon, Elena begins to notice some subtle differences in her lover's behaviour. Worried by the random and unexplainable changes, she sets out to unearth his problems. (Set before 5x01 'I Know What You Did Last Summer. AU.)

All I See  
Chapter Seven

_In the darkness I will meet my creators.  
And the will agree, that I'm a suffocator._

He hadn't said a single word to her since she had dragged him back to the Salvatore boarding house. In his room, he was skulking around, slumped shoulders. Miserable. He was clad in mud and blood, the dried crimson liquid flaking and turning brown as it congealed into clumps in his raven black hair. The coppery smell clung to him, coating him in the twang that had first given him away. It was as if he hoped that the smell of old blood would ward somehow manage to ward Elena way.

These were the times where she wanted to hit him. How, after all they had struggled through together, was he still unable to realise that she wasn't going to cast him aside, or exchange him for someone 'better'? For all his intelligence, he had little to no common sense at all. Frustrated, Elena peered through the gap of his ajar bedroom door. Before she had a chance to over think, she pushed it open and marched across the threshold, dumping a pile of clean towels onto his bed.

"You. Wash." Damon half turned to look at her, his face dead pan. Irritated, Elena placed her hands on her hips. "_Now._" She hadn't expected him to respond. She'd thought he would have either completely ignored her or told her to go away, but she surprised her by letting out a long sigh and complying. Lethargically, he collected the stack of towels before shuffling over to the bath, twisting the sparkling silver taps that set off the thick of jet of water from the shower head. For a moment, he just stood blankly staring at the thousands of water droplets as they pattered against the bottom of the ceramic tub, looking more moody and brooding than even Stefan would have been able to manage.

"Stop doing that. You look like Stefan." Elena raised an eyebrow, her arms folding across her chest as her words rang out, sounding uncharacteristically loud in the quiet of the room. The name of his brother caused the dark haired vampire to stir. Blinking, he raised his head, a smile crossing his features. It would have been malicious had his heart been it, but he was just too haggard to carry off any other emotion other than despondency.

"You'd like me if I looked like Stefan." Elena rolled her eyes at him, not even bothering to feed him a comeback that he could just use to twist in an argument. Instead, she mutely hoisted herself up onto the bathroom counter beside the sink, swinging her legs absently. She was absolutely fine with just waiting for him. After all, they had forever.

"Why do you want me to shower? Because you can't stand the smell of the mess I've made?" Damon asked her after several minutes had slowly ticked by. His voice penetrated Elena, dripping with it's usual sarcasm. A small shard of hope ripped through her, making her straighten slightly. He was sounding like himself. Like her Damon.

"No, because if you touch anything whilst you're covered in that crap, you're going to mess everything in the house up and then blame me for it later because your OCD can't handle it." Elena countered, suppressing yet another eye roll as an image of the chaos that would ensue due to having a dirty house flared up in her brain. Comically, Elena could all too clearly picture Damon flipping out at her with a clenched jaw as he rolled up the expensive Persian carpets and antique upholstery, throwing the affected items in the back of his car and then speeding off to the nearest place he could find that would clean and renew them.

_Nothing like that would ever happen if you don't get through to him. _It was that fear inducing thought that dragged the smile forcefully from Elena's upwards curved lips. Feeling like she had just been doused in cold water, Elena surfaced to reality, concentrating on Damon.

He had stepped into the shower and was standing beneath the jet of water. His shoulders were rigid, his back as stiff as a wooden board, his arms hanging awkwardly at his sides. His face was utterly unfathomable, giving nothing away at all.

He was standing oddly, shoulders rigid, back as stiff as a board, but his arms were hanging loosely at his sides. He looked utterly lost, as if he had no idea what to do with himself. In that moment, Elena wanted to rush to him, to gather him in her arms, to murmur that everything was ok and they never had to talk about it again, that they could just let it go and return to normal.

The only thing that stopped her was knowledge. Cold, hard solid, something that they were unable to overlook.

Strangely, Elena found herself appreciating the irony of the situation. Knowledge was what she was striving for, the inexplicable to power to be able to understand the thought process that was causing Damon to act so brashly, to know whatever it was that had spurred him to turn into a blood guzzling monster over the space of one night. Yet at the same time, it was the thing that happened to be frightening her the most in light of the present situation. Having the ability to understand meant that there was nothing to hide behind. Comprehension, illumination... it wasn't always golden.

It was the sound of ferocious scrubbing that snapped Elena out of her dark thoughts.

Looking up, her eyes snagged onto Damon. The dried blood that had caked his entire body was turning the water a stale crimson colour. The putrid smell of something foul and spoiled infiltrated her nostrils, almost causing her to grimace and turn away. But she couldn't, not when Damon was so viciously scraping at his skin, siphoning the dried blood off of himself in the most aggressive way imaginable. The smell of old, dirty blood was quickly replaced with a new scent.

"Stop it!" Elena gasped, blurring forward, finger clenching roughly around his wrists, forcing him to be still. "Regret is no reason to harm yourself!"

The stormy blue eyes that raised to meet Elena's were strangely calm. The fight left Damon's body. As Elena loosened her fingers, his wet arms dropped despondently to his sides, where they hung, useless. "Damon," Elena said softly. "Talk to me. Please."

/\

_I need to talk to you. Please.  
__Joseph Salvatore._

_With a sigh, Damon re-scanned the letter sent to him by his young cousin. Damon had been shocked to receive a letter from any member of the Salvatore family that wasn't Stefan, and even the possibility that Stefan would have made an attempt to contact him was utterly miniscule. All Damon really knew about his cousin, was that he had taken over the running of the Salvatore Boarding House, back home in Mystic Falls. He hadn't had a clue whether it was successful, nor did he care. Yet the tone of urgency expressed in the letter was undeniable... and for Joseph to reach out to _him _of all people, was nothing short of a miracle. _

_He had estranged himself from his family for a reason. So why was it that Damon had felt a strange compulsion to go to them when they requested his aid? He stood outside the heavy doors of his old home, knuckles poised above the varnished wood, frozen mid-knock. There was a last, fleeting moment of hesitance before Damon abandoned the polite motion of knocking, and seized the door handle, thrusting the double doors open and letting them crash closed behind him. Stepping across the threshold, Damon was hit with a horrible thud of memories. None of them were nice. _

_Each and every one dragged him back to the haunting ways in which he had been treated by his family; a mother who had died to soon, a father who had openly expressed his hatefulness, a brother who had once loved him. A girl who had stolen his heart and dragged it with her, deep beneath the ground, locking it away in a tomb. Memories that he would like nothing more than to forget. _

_Bracing himself against them, Damon headed into the parlour. It was, funnily enough, exactly how he remembered it, the grand kind of splendour that didn't really exist anywhere other than in the homes of families from old money, or within buildings that strove to preserve some kind of exquisite historical tastes. Tapestries, mahogany polished to perfection, Persian rugs, velvet upholstery... it was home to Damon. _

_Standing, looking out of the window, was Joseph. Broad shouldered but short, he wasn't anything impressive to look at. As Damon cleared his throat loudly, the male turned around. Instantly, Damon knew something was wrong. Joseph was too composed, his features drawn tightly together and held in place like a heavy concrete mask, his knuckles white as he clutched a tumbler of amber bourbon that he neither offered nor drank himself. _

_"What do you need from me then, Joe?" Damon asked wanly, immediately feeling exhausted. He was tired of it. Tired of the same old treatment from his family - the only called him to use him, or abuse him. Sometimes, it was even both. Suppressing a snort of amusement, Damon internally told himself that this was it - this would be the last time. _

_As Joseph remained tight lipped, Damon's sense of unease grew. It was when he took a step toward his human relative that every instinct in his body screamed that he was stepping into trap. But the instinct's had called out too late. Damon's hands had slotted neatly around Joseph's neck. With a resounding crack, the bones gave way easily under his crushing grip. But as the noise of bones crunching echoed through the parlour, a jet of nauseating pain crashed through Damon like a tidal wave. It was strange, that whilst the waves of pain rushed through every line of his body, Damon was still able to pin point exactly where it had come from. He had been stabbed in the back._

_Oh the irony. _

/\

"That's awful," Elena murmured, eyes as round as saucers as she stared at Damon. Wrapped in towels, looking younger than he'd ever looked before, a veil of vulnerability surrounded him. She wanted nothing more than to take him in her arms, to cradle him close to her. To tell him that with her, she'd be safe. Nothing like that would ever befall him again; not whilst she was around. Yet words and an embrace were simply not enough. She could see that plainly, that his family's constant misuse of him had cut him deep. Perhaps more deeply than he'd ever care to admit. It would take more, a lot more than a couple of sweet words to wash away the pain of the betrayal... and even then, there would still be scar tissue. "I can't believe they did that to you."

"Neither can I, sometimes." Damon muttered, his eyes dropping to fix on his hands, clasped tightly together in his lap. Then he let out a bark of dry, humourless laughter. "Then I remember that they'd been doing it to me for a long time before they did that. And they even did it after."

Elena pursed her lips tightly together, not trusting herself to speak. She knew he was referring to Stefan. When both brothers had returned to Mystic Falls, both with different agendas, Stefan had tried everything in the book to drive Damon away, but his obsession with Katherine Pierce had stuck him firm. Gently, she probed further. "What happened next?"

/\

_The smell of dirt and dust infiltrated his nostrils as he groggily pulled himself from the swamp of nausea and darkness. Blinking to clear his blurred vision, Damon became alert to one thing only. The bars. He flew to them, colliding painfully against the cold metal, his fingers wrapping tightly around their width as his powerful arms tensed against them. His entire body jerked back, muscles rippling beneath his skin as he fought to break them, bend them, _anything. _When they did not yield, he was overcome with a raw panic so intense it had him crashing forcefully into the brick walls. His impact made no disruption to the clay and mortar, but left him overexerted, breathless and panting miserably, face down in the grime._

_Grimly, he realised that his fatigue was down to the vervain that was occupying his system. As memories of Joseph's betrayal began to shroud him, he felt the painful prick in his back all over again, followed by the crashing of hard floor on his knees. He had managed to snap Joe's neck, but somehow, he had still ended up behind bars, caged like an animal._

_"How goes our friend?" A smooth and silky voice sounded from the gloom that obscured everything on the other side of the bars. With a strangled cry, Damon threw himself at them, forcing his arms between the tight spaces, flailing wildly as he tried to grab for the person. But they were concealed by the ever-present darkness. The lack of clarity choked Damon. For the first time since 1864, Damon Salvatore was afraid._

_"Apparently, not good." An amused laughter brushed across Damon's skin. Flinching at the sound of someone delighting so much in his misfortune, Damon slid to the floor, his forehead leaning against the coldness of the metal bars. Following a shot pause, there was the sound of match being struck before a flickering, orange glow softly illuminated the surrounding area. The darkness on the other side of the bars dwindled, revealing nothing but a bleak corridor, the walls made up of enormous heavy stones. The smooth belonged to a middle aged man, pale skinned and light haired. His lips were a soft pink, thin and cruel. His eyes were black, glittering like writhing beetles in their sockets. Everything about the man, from the way he leaned a little closer to the bars, a manic smile emblazoned across his features, the sultry smoothness of his disconcerting voice told Damon he was someone evil. _

_"Welcome to Augustine, 20151!"_

_"Who are you?" Damon managed to choke out, his voice as dry as the dust that coated the floor. _

_Again, that laughter. That cruel, callous laughter that managed to raise every hair on Damon's body and set each and every single one of his nerves alight. It was a sound that filled him with the desire to run, to flee from the threat that faced him. "I'm Dr Whitmore, Damon Salvatore. I'm your friendly neighbourhood medical researcher." _

/\

The change that had come over Damon was enormous. His skin had drained of all colour, leaving him looking sickly and pallid. His body was quivering, his face flickering between two different facial expressions: horror and anger. For a moment, he was stuck in some kind of limbo, before the words exploded him from, full of an excruciating agony. "I _can't _Elena! I can't do this!"

He was on his feet in a millisecond.

But she had anticipated it.

She was standing in front of him, her small hands planted firmly on his shoulders. Brown eyes met blue, and for a moment, she was afraid that she was useless. He was baulking, ready to run from the memories that haunted him. "Damon, it's hard, I know! I get that, I really do! You try to take-off all the time, like you can somehow outrun it, but you can't run away from what's in your own head! You have to face it, Damon!" She paused, her voice softening. "You don't have to speak, Damon. Just show me."

Tentatively, she placed her hands on his forehead.

/\

_He was strapped to a stiff metal board. The ties that bound his arms were too strong for even he, an enraged vampire, to break out of. His chest heaved as he panted for breath, his teeth grinding together as he bit back a wail, refusing to let it escape. Elena could practically hear his thoughts screaming at her, the desire to win, to beat this man. He was naked, without dignity. Without anything. The last thing that he had left was self-control. The room stunk of vervain._

_Flitting closer to Damon, Elena's stomach dropped as she saw the mangled mess that was Damon's left eye socket. Blood and gore dribbled down his face, the scarlet only bringing out the stark whiteness that was his skin. They were torturing him._

_A skitter of panic danced down Elena's spine as Dr Whitmore, kitted out in his white lab coat an armed with a wickedly sharp, curved scalpel moved slowly toward Damon. The man's brow was creased in frustration, as if he wasn't happy with what little composure Damon had managed to maintain. It was like he _wanted _to hear the terrible, drawn out screams of agony. _

_"What's this? A stronger display of will power? I wonder how long you'll remain silent when I begin to cut out your lungs." _

/\

A flash of white blinded Elena, flinging her back into a bleak reality. A ringing silence gripped both she and Damon, banding them together in a horrible moment of unity. Things were beginning to come together.

Damon began to speak, his voice horribly detatched, terrifyingly despondent, yet there was a chill in it that turned Elena's blood to ice. "It had started to get tedious. Every day, I had to go through the same thing. They wrestled me from my cell, they stuck more and more vervain in me. They dragged me to a living nightmare. I began to anticipate where he would stick knives and scalpels into me. But every time, it was a different place. The same pain, but different. I though that one day, perhaps I'd switch off to it. No such luck. Instead, as I got weaker, the agony intensified. It was excruciating.

"All I knew for five, long years, were the sounds of my own screams, and my flesh being ripped apart. With what little light I had in that cage, I would sit and watch my skin regrow after drinking a singular shot of blood - the one small thing that they gave me to sustain me. At first, I had hope. That perhaps someone would hear the cries, and come investigating. But the longer I was there, the less I held out. The only thing that saved me? Switching everything off."

"You... turned off your humanity?" Elena's voice was barely above a whisper. Her heart thudded painfully against her rib cage. Her blood pounded in her ears. Finally, he was telling all.

"To an extent, yes. I shut off every emotion apart from a single one."

He paused.

"Rage."

* * *

A/N: So here it is, the beginning of Damon's story to Elena. Thank you all for being patient and bearing with me, I understand that my updates are all over the place, but A-Levels are currently taking over my life... although, I am hoping that I will be able to deliver the next chapter even faster.

I am letting you know now, we are nearing the close.

As always, a huge thank you to everyone who leaves a review, a favourite, or follows, or even reads this. I appreciate you all.


End file.
